preserved in divers copies more or less complete, in Latin and Greek
(C.I.L. iii. 801 sq.; compare Ephem. epigr. iv. 180, and, as similar
monuments, the lex portus of Cirta, of A.D. 202 Wil. 2738, and the
fragment of a regulation for the importation of wines into Rome,
Henz. 5089, Wil. 2739); and some of the age of Constantine, as that
relating to Hispellum in Umbria (Henz. 5580; Wil. 2843), that of
Julian found at Amorgos (C.I.L. iii. 459; Henz. 6431), and some
others, of which copies exist also in the juridical collections. Of two
imperial rescripts of a still later age A.D. 413, fragments of the
originals, written on papyri, have been found in Egypt (see Mommsen
and Jaffé, Jahrbüch des gemeinen deutschen Rechts, vol. vi., 1861, p. 398;
Hänel, Corpus legum, p. 281). Imperial decrees, granting divers
privileges to soldiers, are the diplomata militaria also, mentioned
above, incised on two combined bronze tablets in the form of
diptycha (L. Renier, “Recueil de diplômes militaires”; C.I.L. iii.
842 sqq., 1955 sqq.; Wil. 2862-2869), belonging to nearly all emperors
from Claudius down to Diocletian. Though not a decree, yet as a
publication going back directly to the emperor, and as being preserved
in the monumental form, the speech of the emperor Claudius,
delivered in the senate, relating to the Roman citizenship of the
Gauls, of which Tacitus gives an abstract (Ann. xi. 23), ought also to
be mentioned here; it was engraved on large bronze slabs by the
public authority of Lugudunum (Lyons), where a large fragment of
it is still preserved (Boissieu, Inscriptions antiques de Lyon, p. 132
sq.). Another sort of decrees, relating to a great variety of subjects,
has to be mentioned, emanating, not directly from the emperors, but
from their functionaries. Such are the decree of the proconsul L.
Helvius Agrippa, of the year A.D. 68, on the boundaries of some
tribes on the island of Sardinia (C.I.L. x. 7852; Wil. 872 a); that
of the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander, written in Greek,
the same year (C. I. Graec. 4957); that of C. Helvidius Priscus,
on a similar question relating to Histonium, belonging perhaps to the
end of the 1st century (Wil. 873); that of the legate of Trajan, C.
Avidius Nigrinus, found at Delphi, in Greek and Latin (C.I.L. iii.
567; Orel. 3671; Wil. 874); a rescript of Claudius Quartinus,
perhaps the imperial legate of the Tarraconensis, of the year A.D. 119,
found at Pampluna (C.I.L. ii. 2959; Orel. 4032); the epistle of the
praefecti praetorio to the magistrates of Saepinum, of about A.D. 166–169
(C.I.L. ix. 2438; Wil. 2841); the decree of L. Novius Rufus,
another legate of the Tarraconensis, who ex tilia recitavit, of A.D. 193
(C.I.L. ii. 4125; Orel. 897; Wil. 876); the sentence of Alfenius
Senecio, then subprefect of the classis praetoria Misenensis, belonging
to the beginning of the 3rd century, formerly existing at Naples
(C.I.L. x. 3334); and some others of the 4th and 5th centuries, not
requiring specific mention here. Quite a collection of epistles of high
Roman functionaries is found in the celebrated inscription of Thorigny
(Mommsen, Berichte der sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1852,
p. 235 sq.). The letter of a provincial functionary, a priest of Gallia
Narbonensis, to the fabri subaediani of Narbonne, of the year 149,
may also be mentioned (Henz. 7215; Wil. 696 a). To these must be
added the tabulae alimentariae, relating to the well-known provision
made by Trajan for the relief of distress among his subjects, such as
that of the Ligures Baebiani (C.I.L. ix. 1455; Wil. 2844) and that
of Veleia near Parma (Wil. 2845); while evidence of similar institutions
is furnished by inscriptions at Tarracina, at Sicca in Africa, and
at Hispalis in Spain (Wil. 2846-2848; C.I.L. ii. 1174). At the close
of this long list of official documents may be mentioned the
libellus of the procurator operum publicorum a columna divi Marci
of the year 193 (C.I.L. vi. 1585; Orel. 39; Wil. 2840) and the
interlocutiones of the praefecti vigilum on a lawsuit of the fullones
of Rome, of A.D. 244, inscribed on an altar of Hercules (C.I.L. vi.
266; Wil. 100). These documents form a most instructive class
of instrumenta.
5. Many documents, as may be supposed, were connected with religious worship, public and private. The oldest lex templi, which continued in force until a comparatively late period, was the regulation given by Servius Tullius to the temple of Diana on the Aventine, after the conclusion of the federal pact with the Latini, noticed above. Mention is made of this ancient law as still in force in two later documents of a similar character, viz. the dedication of an altar to Augustus by the plebs of Narbo in southern France, of A.D. 764, but existing only, at Narbonne, in a copy, made perhaps in the 2nd century (C.I.L. xii. 4333; Orel. 2489; Wil. 104), and that of an altar of Jupiter, dedicated at Salonae in Dalmatia in A.D. 137, still existing in part at Padua (C.I.L. iii. 1933; Orel. 2490; Wil. 163). Another lex fani still existing is that of a temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo, a vicus of southern Italy, of the year 696 (58 B.C.), but copied, in vernacular language, from an older original (C.I.L. i. 603; Orel. 2488; Wil. 105; compare Jordan in Hermes, vol. vii., 1872, pp. 201 sq.). The lists of objects belonging to some sanctuaries or to the ornaments of statues are curious, such as those of the Diana Nemorensis at Nemi (Henz. Hermes, vol. vi., 1871, pp. 8 sq.), and of a statue of Isis in Spain (Hübner, Hermes, vol. i., 1866, pp. 345 sq.; compare C.I.L. ii. 2060, 3386, Orel. 2510, Wil. 210), and two synopses from a temple at Cirta in Africa (Wil. 2736, 2737). The sortes given by divinities may also be mentioned (see C.I.L. i. 267 sq.; Wil. 2822). To a temple also, though in itself of a secular character, belonged a monument of the highest historical importance, viz. the Index rerum a se gestarum, incised on bronze slabs, copies of which Augustus ordered to be placed, in Latin and Greek, where required, in the numerous Augustea erected to himself in company with the Dea Roma. This is known as the Monumentum Ancyranum, because it is at Angora in Asia Minor that the best preserved copy of it, in Greek and Latin, exists; but fragments remain of other copies from other localities (see C.I.L. iii. 779 sq., and the special editions of Mommsen, Berlin, 1865, and Bergk, Göttingen, 1873). Among the inscriptions relating to sacred buildings must also be reckoned the numerous fragments of Roman calendars, or fasti anni Juliani, found at Rome and other places, which have been arranged and fully explained by Mommsen (C.I.L. i., 2nd ed., part ii.; compare for those found in Rome, C.I.L. vi. 2294-2306). Local, provincial or municipal calendaria have likewise been found (as the feriale Cumanum, C.I.L. i. part ii. p. 229, and the Capuanum, C.I.L. x. 3792). Many other large monumental inscriptions bear some relation, more or less strict, to sacred or public buildings. Along with the official calendar exhibited on the walls of the residence of the pontifex maximus, the list of the eponymous magistrates, inscribed by the order of Augustus on large marble slabs, was publicly shown—the fasti consulares, the reconstruction and illustration of which formed the life-work of Borghesi. These have been collected, down to the death of Augustus, by Henzen, and compared with the additional written testimonies, by Mommsen, in the Corpus (vol. i., 2nd ed., part ii.), along with the acta triumphorum and other minor fragments of fasti found in various Italian communities, while the fasti sacerdotum publicorum populi Romani, together with the tabula feriarum Latinarum, are given in the volume devoted exclusively to the monuments of Rome (vol. vi. 441 sq.; compare Hermes, vol. v., 1870, p. 379, and Ephem. epigr. ii. 93, iii. 74, 205 sq.). Documents of the same kind, as, for example, the album ordinis Thamugadensis from Africa (C.I.L. viii. 2403, 17903), and a considerable mass of military lists (latercula, of which those belonging to the garrison of the metropolis are brought together in C.I.L. vi. 651 sq.), are given on many dedicatory and honorary monuments, chiefly from Lambaesis in Africa (C.I.L. viii.). As those documents, though having only a partial claim to be ranked with the sacred ones, derive, like many other dedicatory monuments, their origin and form from that class, so also the protocols (acta), which, from Augustus downwards, seem to have been preserved in the case of all important collegia magistratuum, now survive only from one of the largest and most distinguished collegia sacerdotum, in the acta collegii fratrum Arvalium, to which Marini first drew the attention of epigraphists; they form one of the most important masses of epigraphic monuments preserved to us in the Latin language (see C.I.L. vi. 459 sq., Ephem. epigr. ii. 211 sq., and Henzen’s Acta fratrum Arvalium, Berlin, 1874).
6. Another species of instruments is formed by private documents. They have been incidentally preserved (inserted, for instance, into sepulchral and honorary inscriptions), in the later period not unfrequently in monumental form, as the testaments, given partly or in full, mentioned above (viz. that of Dasumius and the Gaul, C.I.L. vi. 10229, Wil. 314, 315, and some capita testamentorum or codicilli, as that of M. Meconius Leo found at Poetelia—C.I.L. x. 113, 114; Orel. 3677, 3678; Wil. 696), and the donations, such as those of T. Flavius Syntrophus (C.I.L. vi. 10239; Wil. 313), of T. Flavius Artemidorus (Wil. 310), of Statia Irene and Julia Monime (C.I.L. vi. 10231, 10247; Wil. 311, 318). Of a peculiar description is the pactum fiduciae, found in Spain, engraved on a bronze tablet, and belonging, in all probability, to the 1st century (C.I.L. ii. 5042), which seems to be a formulary. Other documents relating to private affairs exist in their original form, written on tabellae ceratae. Those found together in a mining district of Dacia have been arranged and explained by Mommsen and Zangemeister (C.I.L. iii. 291 sq., with facsimiles); those found at Pompeii in 1875, containing receipts of the banker L. Caecilius Jucundus, have been published in C.I.L. iv. (suppl.). These documents are written in cursive letters; and so mostly, too, are some other curious private monuments, belonging partly to the sacred inscriptions—the defixiones (cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 69), imprecations directed against persons suspected of theft or other offences, who, according to a very ancient superstition, were in this way believed to be delivered to punishment through the god to whom the defixio was directed. The numerous Greek and Latin (and even Oscan) examples of this usage have been brought together by Audollent, Defixionum tabellae quotquot innotuerunt tam in Graecis Orientis quam in totius Occidentis partibus praeter Atticas (Paris, 1904); compare C.I.L. i. 818-820, C.I.L. vii. 140). Only a few of them are incised on stone (as that to the Dea Ataecina from Spain, C.I.L. ii. 462); for the most part they are written, in cursive letters, or in very debased capitals, on small bronze or lead tablets (so C.I.L. i. 818, 819; Henz. 6114, 6115; Wil. 2747, 2748), to be laid in the tombs of the “defixi,” or deposited in the sanctuaries of some divinity.
7. Many of the private documents just alluded to have not a monumental character similar to that of the other inscriptions in the wider sense of the word, as they are written on materials not very durable, such as wood and lead—in the majority of cases, in cursive characters; but, nevertheless, they cannot be classed as literature. As a last species, therefore, of instrumenta, there remain some documents, public and private, which similarly lack the strict monumental character, but still are to be reckoned among inscriptions. These are the inscriptions painted or scratched (graffiti) on
